PRELIMINARY EVALUATION OF BIOLOGICAL ACTIVATORS FOR TOMATO WASTE COMPOSTING

Abstract

Compost activators are microorganisms and nutrients mixtures primarily used to speed up the decomposition of organic, agricultural and industrial wastes and to enhance the biological and nutritional fertilizers quality. This research tested fermented herbal preparations (FHP), native beneficial microbiota captured in rice (NBMR) and cellulolytic, proteolytic and amylolytic microorganisms (CPAM) as biological inoculants added to tomato waste composting in order to evaluate its performance in the degradation of these wastes and fertilizers quality. The shortest degradation was observed with CPAM (78 days), followed by MNBA and FHP (84 days) and finally the uninoculated control (91 days). All fertilizers meet current standards , except the treatment NBMR regarding phytotoxicity test (61%), which had an average value lower than required by international standards (≥ 90%). Although the nutrients concentrations, except boron, were higher in compost with biological activators, there were no significant differences between inoculated and uninoculated compost at P <0.05. Biological inoculants showed to be effective decreasing the composting degradation time of organic material and increasing nutrient content relative to uninoculated compost; however, it is important to continue optimizing the doses to obtain significant results for the improvement of the obtained fertilizers nutritional quality.

Key Words: Biological activators, fermented herbal preparations, microbial inocula.